Total ban on cell phones in middle schools tested for a week

The “digital break” is one of the new features of this school year, which students in nearly 200 middle schools in France are experimenting with: the deposit, as soon as they arrive at the establishment, of their mobile phone in a dedicated place.

Since 2018, a law has theoretically banned the use of phones on school premises: students can have them, but turn them off and in their bags. In reality, many young people continue to use them in secret, which can be a source of distraction and even conflict and harassment. This fall, an experiment is underway in nearly 200 middle schools across the country. It involves putting your cell phone in a locker or briefcase, instead of keeping it with you.

The idea is to combat fraudulent use in corridors or in class. At the Langeac middle school (Haute-Loire), 100 km from Clermont-Ferrand, the 200 students have had to start by heading to the lockers for a week now. Each student puts their books and phone there.

Anouk, a 3rd grade student, confides: in past years, she would occasionally open her favorite apps Snapchat, Instagram or TikTok while she was in middle school: “It was also good to have some time on our phone, to ‘get away’ from school a bit… Now we chat among ourselves, we talk more, as a result. My parents think it’s good, because it stops us from looking at the phone too much, but sometimes it’s from them that the messages came to know what time we were leaving, if they were coming to pick us up…” If it’s so difficult to completely put your phone down during the day, it’s because some teens spend all their free time on it, several middle school girls testify: “Even when I walk home,” recognizes one of them, who admits to looking at her phone “seven hours a day, at least.”

These students are, in fact, very afraid of leaving their phone in a locker, even if it is locked: “It makes me a little anxioussaid one of them, that it gets stolen, that someone touches it… My phone is my computer comfort blanket !” According to these teenagers, this new rule will quickly be circumvented by certain students.

Theoretically, there is no more risk of theft than before, since the phone was supposed to be at the bottom of the bag, switched off. But some families use this as an excuse to no longer give their children their phone at all, explains the principal of Langeac middle school, Pierrick Villard: “Some parents said : ‘children will not take their phones to school’, especially since we reminded all families that if they needed to contact their child they could call the school support service and that we would forward the message… This was already the case before, but the easy solution was a text message sent directly to the child, including during class time.”

The advantage of this new ban is that it protects school time, according to a teacher, and may mark the beginning of a break in the habit, according to the middle school supervisors. The resigning Minister of National Education, Nicole Belloubet, has announced that she wants to generalize the experiment to all middle schools from next January. From a practical point of view, this ambition still raises some questions: in this middle school in Langeac, students use the existing lockers, but it is not 100% effective, since they have access to them during the day to collect their textbooks.

Safe equipment would be a specific locker or case for all the phones in the class, but this has a cost and frightens the association of French departments, responsible for the maintenance and equipment of colleges. “There was an estimate of the cost of installing these lockers dedicated to laptops : 120 million eurosexplains Marie-Pierre Mouton, who chairs the association’s Education committee. And I remember the very recent remarks of Bruno Le Maire, saying that the communities were responsible for France’s deficits… So it’s ‘double standards’. !”

Another potential problem: the question of liability in the event of theft. Some also fear crowds when dropping off and picking up laptops, and that it will take time. According to the association of French departments, it would be better for middle schools to have enough staff to enforce the 2018 law. It is joined on this subject by parents’ associations, who would prefer more adults in schools, rather than brand new lockers. “Many parents have concerns about the use of screens by their teenagers, it is necessary to regulate these uses in schools. However, we will remember that this is a measure that has existed since 2018 and which is not really implemented, due to a lack of human resources.underlines Grégoire Ensel, vice-president of the FCPE. We need to stop with all these announcements that, once on the ground, fail to be deployed. In the medium and long term, we also want real education in digital life for students.”